


Deconstructing an Idol

by TheWalkingGrimes



Series: Tales of District Four [6]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Character Study, F/M, Friendship, Gen, PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Psychological Trauma, Subtly implied background sex trafficking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27615046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWalkingGrimes/pseuds/TheWalkingGrimes
Summary: Four things that Annie learns from being Finnick's friend.
Relationships: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair
Series: Tales of District Four [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018845
Kudos: 41





	Deconstructing an Idol

Annie learns a few things from being Finnick’s friend.

The first being that he’s lovely.

Physically, yes, _obviously._ He’s handsome - beautiful, she supposes - which is not new to her or anyone in Panem. 

But it’s a different kind of beautiful than the cameras seem capable of capturing - though Annie doubts they would ever be interested in trying.

It’s quieter, simpler.

The way that he learns how she likes her tea without asking, one morning just starts getting it ready for her when he hears the sound of her footsteps at the top of the stairs so by the time she’s sitting at Mags's kitchen table and blinking the nightmares out of her eyes he’s sliding it under her nose. 

They play chess often and it annoys him that she’s so much better - he thinks he’s supposed to be the strategist - and she catches him one night when she slips down for a glass of water, playing a game against himself to practice, brow furrowed unflatteringly as he tries to replicate a move she pulled on him earlier that day.

Very quickly he’s able to sense when things are getting bad for her and will try to steer conversations in happier directions - before Mags realizes most of the time, and sometimes before Annie herself. 

He's thoughtful, and he notices things, and it's not at all what she would have expected of him.

The second is that he cries in his sleep sometimes. 

This takes a little longer to discover because for so long Annie’s sleep is disrupted by nightmares and Finnick - who has been staying over at Mags's house to help Annie 'adjust' - sleeps near her with his door cracked so that he can hear her and help her if she needs someone to anchor her back to reality. Eventually when the nightmares die down he starts to sleep a little deeper but with the door still cracked.

It’s not full hysterics or anything like what shakes Annie awake. The reason she even discovers it at all is because she hears what sounds like a small animal - a rodent probably but perhaps a more destructive creature - and goes to investigate in the middle of the night. 

That’s how she finds him, bunched up in a fetal position with his back to the wall - his bed was originally in the middle of the room, like hers, but she sees that he’s pushed it against the wall - mostly silent but with the occasional fitfull twitch.

And then… just a small sad noise that doesn’t sound like it belongs to him at all. So much so that Annie almost creeps inside to see if maybe the animal had gotten into Finnick’s room.

But then he cries out again and it’s so pitiful that Annie’s heart freezes in her chest because this, _this_ is something she’s never seen from him. Not even in the Games when he was injured - he hissed and swore and his eyes stung with tears when he bit down on the sleeve of his jacket while he applied the medicine - but he’s never seemed… broken. 

That’s supposed to be her territory.

Annie leaves him be because she knows how she gets when people wake her up from _those_ dreams and he’s more than twice her size. If he’s not here - if he’s _there_ and if he still thinks he’s there, he could break her neck before he comes back here.

(the little voice in her head that’s always screaming _run run run run run run_ never lets her forget the things that he’s capable of. the atrocities she’s seen him commit on a large shiny screen with no emotion other than fierce determination. 

That he’s as much a survivor as he is a murderer).

The next morning Annie is expecting _something -_ some sign of the previous night’s distress. Dark circles maybe, a haggard look or a haunted echo in his eyes.

Nothing. He slides her tea under her chin and gives her a cheeky grin. 

“Bet you I can beat you at chess today. I’ve been practicing.”

He doesn’t beat her, which he pouts about, and Annie realizes that even though she can read the moves he’s planning from a mile away, she has absolutely no idea how to deconstruct him in the same manner.

The third is that he is _lazy._

It takes time for Annie to work up to keeping up with his daily goings about, but once she does she realizes there isn’t much to keep up with - he doesn’t _do_ anything. He’s not productive, when he’s not going out on fishing trips (which isn’t even really productive because it’s all catch and release so he doesn’t eat into the supply for fishermen who actually have a quota to fulfill) or working out or heading off to the Capitol he’s just… lazing on a beach. Or swimming. But usually laying on the Victor’s beach, sometimes with a silly frivolous book or just sleeping.

It takes her very little time to get bored with it and Annie wonders if he’s truly content living this way. He’s so bright and exuberant and full of life that if _she’s_ starting to feel trapped in their little mundane life then surely he must be.

“Nah,” Finnick says when she asks one day. He’s currently burying her foot with sand, but trying to be sneaky about it (unsuccessfully, though she still lets him). “I like doing nothing. It’s nice to relax for once.”

“All I do is relax.” This can’t be her life - it _can’t_ be. 

She’s - there’s just this big nothingness and is this really what she fought and clawed and _drowned_ to come back to? Her father dead, her brother disappeared (probably dead) and Annie’s just sitting on a beach doing _nothing_ all day.

Finnick’s hand comes to settle over her shaking one. 

“Wanna go into town? Bet we could sneak some food to the kids on the docks when the Peacekeepers aren’t looking.”

They do, and it’s an adventure, and Annie forgets that it was almost a bad day.

The fourth is that he’s self-destructive.

He must be, because one day he just… leaves. Gone with barely a quick goodbye. Off to go stir up publicity (for the Games, though he doesn’t say that in front of her. Which irritates Annie although she knows it’s probably fair since she broke a vase the last time someone brought up the Games to her), and do a couple promos for branding.

“Branding?” Annie asks, confused.

Finnick rolls his eyes. “They want me to endorse a bottled water company. Because I’m from Four. No one ever accused the Capitol of being subtle.”

So he goes off and he acts like it’s just some business trip to do advertising and interviews. Which he does - Annie doesn’t watch the Games ones but she sees the bottled water advertisement and it’s just as stupid as Finnick’s eye rolls would suggest. 

He also seems to let off a lot of steam in between the shoots.

Annie tries to avoid it, but she misses him - misses him more than she should, and she _hates_ that - and she turns on their barely used TV and finds a celebrity gossip channel to see if maybe she can glimpse him somewhere and…

It shouldn’t be a shock that he lives up to his reputation. Annie has heard Haley and Lyra gossip about it enough, noticed the Four mothers shake their heads, even seen the skeptical looks that people shoot the pair of them when they walk around town together. 

And pity. There’s a lot of looks of pity, different than the ones that Annie gets when she goes with Mags. Pity for her and sharp glances for him. Like she’s prey and he’s a predator and nobody likes seeing them together.

 _Poor girl,_ they say, _he’s gonna break her fragile little heart._

Annie’s heart doesn’t exactly break watching clip after clip of Finnick at parties, Finnick with his arm around other people that aren’t her, laughing and getting into their space in a way that seems too familiar even for him, Finnick seen out late with _this_ heiress or exiting the apartment of _that_ business tycoon at four in the morning. 

But she’s upset. Of course she’s upset. This Finnick looks like he’s having the time of his life at the Capitol, like that’s where he really belongs. With _them._ Those people that did this to her, that took her father and probably her brother and there’s Finnick, laughing like they’re all friends and partying with them and touching them with those same hands that hold hers when the world is crumbling around her.

She always thought it was just an exaggeration. A play for the cameras. Or maybe - _maybe_ \- that he was changing, growing out of it, that he wouldn’t do that anymore because he knows what they did to her and how could he do that, how could he betray her like that he said she could trust him but none of that was _real_ and how is she supposed to know what’s real when the person she’s supposed to trust is _fake._

Fake fake fake. Nothing but cold Capitol plastic.

Eventually, she calms down and comes out of her fit on her own. 

And she turns off the tv but it stays on her mind.


End file.
